Ahnalira Koan's New Guided Meditations

"Align Within," a new pair of guided meditations by Ahnalira Koan surprised me. I thought my daily meditation had covered it all. I was wrong.

Align Within Mediations With Ahnalira Koan As your Guide

The Joy of Self-Discovery In Wholeness

When Ahnalira Koan asked me to review her new Guided Meditaions, Align Within, I was happy to do it, but a little leery. I review a lot of books, some music; so, why not guided meditations?

Well, two reasons, really. First, Ahna is a friend, and second, having meditated daily for years, what was she going to show me that might be new?

How was I going to stay objective? And what if I didn't like my friends work?

I'm happy to say Ahnalira made it easy. Her guided meditations took me away, and after relaxing through the first, I couldn't wait to do the second.

Lay Down and Get Right to Work

Reviewing As A Form of Leisure

My earliest experience with guided meditations involved waying on my back on our living room carpet and listening to Andrew Weil's nature-oriented set. They were short, none lasting more than twelve minutes.

Caught in a blitz between a new job, a new home and a super-long daily commute, I was frazzled when I needed to be at my best. Listening to Andrew Weill did the trick. He couldn't make my commute any shorter. I did that by moving. But he made it easier.

Ahnalira Koan's meditations are longer, almost a half-hour each, and to be honest, my first concern was about being able to hang in for that long. My own daily meditations, unguided, last that long and, at times, even longer, but that's not the same as listening to someone's voice directing you where to go in that foggy, objectless universe of mind.

Knowing Koan had trained and practiced as a Jungian Therapist excited me though, since I'd hoped after reading Jung as a teenager that he was right. These meditations might be filled with discovery and clarified secrets.

Laying Down On The Job

The time I picked to listen was mid-afternoon, not optimal, but this was part of the job. I'm not ready to take afternoons off. Yet.

Refresh and Renew, the first meditation started easily enough, familiar territory with New Age-style, gentle music setting the atmosphere. Then, Ahnalira's smooth, soft, firm voice carefully set the stage with breathing and connecting that familiar practice with a body awareness of blood flow, rinsing and cleansing in concert with exchange of air.

This is, of course, exactly what happens as oxygen is taken in, flooding your bloodstream, and wastes flushed with every breath, every heartbeat. I found myself enjoying her linking these as a matrix of vivid physical health, a stage, it turned out, for allowing spirit to enter.

Koan's guided meditations are based on the ancient Hawaiian exercise known as Ho’oponopono. The idea is to open up to a clear flow that permeates the universe. Here, she does this by shining a beam of spiritual light into your awareness, once your body has been prepared through relaxaton.

This light emerges fully as the "subtle energy body." Emerge it did, and the guidance made it feel natural to open up and feel the wholeness that followed.

After I'd been eased out of this first meditation, I immediately began plotting my next session of Align Within.

If Only All My Work Could Be Like This

Everyone Has A Dream, Don't They?

Flow and Align, the second meditation in the sequence was another mid-afternoon self-indulgence. Eager though I was, I waited a couple of days to make sure I had enough clarity to see this guided meditation as a distinct experience, not blending the two.

There's a similarity in Flow and Align, since Koan's philosophical approach is the same, as is her altogether pleasing voice. (I've heard enough audiobooks to know what an unpleasant voice can do to good material.) Guided with Ahnalira Koan can be compared to floating down a transcendental river, someone else doing all ther rowing.

The difference here is that the meditaion assumes you've attained a good level of inner peace and awareness and what you needed is the gentle lubrication of universal love and harmony. Big words and tossed around too freely in many New Age circles, but Ahnalira Koan knows what she's talking about.

Real enlightenment comes when that subtle energy body doesn't register as a goal you are reaching for but the place you live most of the time. And you can get there anytime, just my going back to the seeds planted by these remarkable guided meditations.

Care And Feeding Of Dragons

Ahnalira Koan On How Her NDE Opened Her Heart, Her Mind and Her Spirit

Meditation is such an amazing experience and a daily bodily function so many don't realize they deprive themselves of. Love your article. It's like walking and talking we must learn... I can't imagine living without it. WE must reach out to the meditating illiterate and help them to understand the power of energy as is the power of words to reading...